Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/261

 CAPTUKE OP' ATARNEUS. 239 and punishment, for alleged misconduct in his command. 1 The only way in which the Spartan kings formed part of the sovereign power in the state, or shared in the exercise of government properly so called, was that they had votes ex ojficio in the Senate, and could vote there by proxy when they were not present. In ancient times, very imperfectly known, the Spartan kings seem really to have been sovereigns ; the government having then beer, really carried on by them, or by their orders. But in the year 400 B. c., Agis and Pausanias had become nothing mrrc tLa... great and dignified hereditary officers of state, still oearmg the old title of their ancestors. To throw open these hereditary functions to all the members of the Herakleid Gens, by election from their num- ber, might be a change better or worse ; it was a startling novelty (just as it would have been to propose, that any of the various priesthoods, which were hereditary in particular families, should be made elective), because of the extreme attachment of the Spar- tans to old and sanctified customs ; but it cannot properly be styled revolutionary. The ephors, the senate, and the public assembly, might have made such a change in full legal form, without any appeal to violence ; the kings might vote against it, but they would have been outvoted. And if the change had been made, the Spar- tan government would have remained, in form as well as in prin- ciple, just what it was before ; although the Eurystheneid and Pro- kleid families would hi^e lost their privileges. It is not meant here to deny that the Spartan kings were men of great importance in the state, especially when (like Agesilaus) they combined with their official station a marked persoirl energy. But it is not the less true, that the associations, connected with the title of king ir the modern mind, do not properly apply to them. To carry his point at Sparta, Lysander was well aware that agencies of an unusual character must be employed. Quitting Sparta soon after his recall, he visited the oracles cf Delphi, Do- dona, and Zeus Ammon in Libya, 2 in order to procure, by persua- sion or corruption, injunctions to the Spartans, countenancing his projects. So great was the general effect of oracular injunctions on the Spartan mind, that Kleomenes had thus obtained the depo- sition of king Demaratus, and the exiled Pleistoanax, his own 1 Thucyd. v, G3 ; Xen. Hellen. iii, 5, 25 ; iv, 2, 1. - Diodor. xiv, 13 ; Cicero, de Divinat. i, 43. 96 j Cornel. Nepos, I tysaad. *. "u.